Tacenda wrote:The church is holding out that members will be able to move on without the crisis, but even the gospel topic essays are causing members to leave. The inactivity has shot up so much that the real numbers of active members is real low.
PacMan said:
CFR your speculative nonsense. I can say that not a single member in our ward is inactive because of church history issues.
Wow, entertaining thread. Russel McGregor, who has openly identified himself as such while posting as kiwi57 on SeN, is getting his butt kicked, and seems a little confused about the process:
Questioning the bona fides of a habitual troll is not an instance of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Lemmie wrote:Wow again. pacMan is seriously defensive.
PacBoy thinks he's Christ and does the judging. He thinks his ward represents the whole church! What a joke!
Hey, PacBoy! Come talk to Shulem. I want to drill you a new hole.
I know right? And what are the odds that if Pac-Man is as uptight as he sounds, that anyone from his ward would tell him anything they were concerned about? He’s clueless. He’s just like Bednar- ‘there are no homosexuals in my church.’ Right....
grindael wrote:And what's really, really mind blowing? The CES Letter only scratches the surface of what is wrong with the "faithful" narrative the church is pedaling and the historical cover-ups and lies.
There is so much more. The day will come when we will see it. Only a matter of time.
It's one scratch of the false veneer that the church insists on trying to maintain as a moral and authoritative institution with special connections to God.
The church's problem is that it is fundamentally immoral when it claims divine authority.
On 4/22/2016 at 5:11 PM, smac97 said: That's rather the advantage (and intent) of presenting huge lists of the short questions which demand long answers. Responding to such a list becomes unwieldy and impractical. The questioner (in this case, Mr. Runnells) then gets to crow and pat himself on the back and unilaterally declare his position to be "correct" because his exhausting list of questions (accusations, really) was not answered to his self-serving satisfaction.
Thanks,
-Smac
While those who have approximately the attention span of a goldfish can pat him on the back for how "good and concise" his list of (heh heh) "questions" is, while gleefully chortling about how "scattered" and "chaotic" are the much longer answers.
So let’s get this straight. The CES letter notes that there are HUGE numbers of questions about issues in the LDS church, and mopologists respond that answering questions is SO difficult that no one has been able to do it satisfactorily, and also note the fact that there are SO MANY of these unanswerable questions that it just makes the matter worse.
Further, the mopologists also note that readers think the questions have been concisely asked, and that apologist answers are considered scattered and chaotic. And that those who are studying the issues have the attention spans of goldfish.
Somehow I don’t think kiwi’s and smac’s arguments advance the mopologist position....
A few years back I had a friend come to me with a laundry list of her grievances for leaving the Church. She was reading from a sheaf of papers that I could tell had been printed out from a website. It was pretty obvious that she hadn't really studied these items in any meaningful or in-depth way. She just read the list and accepted it. As I recall, virtually every point she recited is found in the CES Letter (in fact, it may well have been the CES Letter she was reading from).
I let her go on for a while, as I could tell she was angry and was looking to vent. After about 20 minutes of her reading from this list, I asked her if she wanted to talk about these various items. She actually seemed a little surprised, as I think she thought that I would be flummoxed at her endless list of grievances. As she had a number of questions and concerns about the First Vision and the various accounts of it, I asked if if she had read the book 'Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations,' edited by John Welch. I said that it has some pretty good information about this topic. She said no. I also asked if she had read anything written by Jeff Lindsay about the First Vision accounts. She said no. I asked her if she had read anything on the FAIR website about this topic. She said no. I asked her if she would be willing to read some of these things and then have a discussion about this topic. She said no. I asked her to reconsider, and suggested that her conclusions about this topic might not be complete if all she has done is read a long list of criticisms against the Church while simultaneously refusing to listen to the Church and its members explain and defend the Church's position on these issues. Again, she said no. I then asked her why not, and she became angry. I tried to find a way to continue the discussion, but she declined and left. A few weeks later she resigned her membership in the Church.
CFR on the person refusing to read anything else, smac97.
In retrospect, I think I could have handled that interaction better. I think she was in a state of anger and high emotion, and perhaps I should have allowed her some time and space to let those feelings dissipate. Instead, I attempted to talk and reason with her in the moment. I thought that this is what she wanted (she approached me, after all). However, I don't think she was situated to have a calm and reasoned discussion. I dunno. I recall silently praying while she was reading her diatribe, hoping that I would be able to say things that could mollify her anger and calm her down. I failed in that regard. Perhaps that was an unattainable goal. Perhaps she was bound and determined to view the Church and its teachings and people in the worst possible ways, and I was just one of the last people to talk with her as she walked out the door.
My friend is currently pursuing a course of conduct that may be called "riotous living." I think about her often....
Can I roll my eyes any further? Now I REALLY call CFR on this. Please. For a lawyer, Smac97 lies and exaggerates outrageously.
(On another note, Shulem, what do you think about him thinking ‘often’ about his female friend’s ‘riotous living’ ?? Something seems a little odd there... .)
Lemmie wrote:Can I roll my eyes any further? Now I REALLY call CFR on this. Please. For a lawyer, Smac97 lies and exaggerates outrageously.
Yeah, Smac is a tool
He has a made up story for every single topic. Between him and that Hamba Tuhan guy, I don't know which one lies more about their "in real life" experiences. He once told how when he was called to be the Young Men's president, there were only 3 boys active in his ward. After all of his miraculous visits and efforts, he had almost 100 boys active by the time he was released. Yeah....right He's got an endless amount of those same types of stories too!
Wow.
.)